September 10, 2023
Well, now this place is up.
A lot of the old blogs have disappeared. I saved some of the ones that were most memorable to me, mostly because I wrote them for the benefit of someone else and he actually came in and read them. Sometimes many years after I wrote them, during a time it was astrologically noted that he would be doing some learning about his personal life, and other times after I had made a strong wish that he would do so, and he apparently heard me and did.
He just never seemed to apply any of it in a way that would include either changing his marriage or ending it.
To be sure, it takes two people to change a marriage enough to make it livable, most of the time. I suppose a person can have an attitude that they are going to be happy no matter what sort of SOB or shrew they are living with, and some people do. But to have a fifty-year connected marriage, most likely both people are doing the heavy lifting.
Who knows, I am no fly on the wall. Things may be better than I think. But, with all the mess in trying to get this website up and all the time it took, I was beginning to think it would just never go up under the old domain name and he wouldn’t be able to find this place anymore. Or, the old site going down would be some kind of demarcation and he just would no longer visit.
At the same time, I was being told that I would receive a message or news of some sort that would make things much better for me.
That news was NO news.
All the tarot readings of right now are basically saying this person is gone for good and I can just forget him now. I’m divinely protected from this person ever showing up again unless and until he can actually take steps to level up into a healthy relationship in his life, and at this point, that time looks like never. I mean, a person can always change, and he has the transits, he could have done it, but …
This person is too low self-esteem. Too much “What will people think?” and “I’m not good enough” and not enough, “I’ve been miserable thirty years,” and “Why does everyone’s happiness count except mine?” So, oh, well.
I can’t do anything about this. Eight years of trying still can’t do anything about it. I think this will just be left for another life, and I’m not so sure I will be in that one.
(Who needs to go through this again?)
So, we are to have no more interaction in this life, and it’s time for me to just put this all behind me for good.
I suddenly remembered the movie The Bridges of Madison County with Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep, and watched it a couple of times and bawled my head off. I was in my twenties when I first saw it and was unaffected by it. Too young, I guess. But now, I understand it. I really, really do.
I have developed the ability to appreciate my life for what it is now. People are really stupid about life. You make a bald statement of fact, such as, I am now old. My body is now old, slow, and fat, and men don’t go for that. Or, I’m very likely to spend the last third of my life alone and then end my days alone in a nursing home, and people behave as if you’ve just blasphemed.
You have such a pessimistic attitude!! You have to see better in yourself!! Why can’t you take your own advice?
Well, you know, you also have to include reality.
Nobody stays young forever. We do get old. And men do have a way of only wanting tight, lean, hard, thin, sexy, lithe, and young. And if you’re old, alone, and especially female—which tends to ensure you will be alone if you are old—you’re going to end up in a nursing home. No family=nursing home. What else are you supposed to do once you’re ninety-four and can’t cook, dress, or toilet yourself anymore?
People seem to think that the only life there can be is a life where you’re young and mobile and coupled up. If you see a reality ahead for yourself that’s different, you’re being pessimistic. Because optimists believe they will be young and should think young forever, and there’s always another relationship around the corner. And you can’t possibly ever be happy without another relationship! You can’t possibly ever be happy without being, thinking, and looking young!
Can you?
I didn’t used to think so. I thought if this guy and I were together, it would be SO much happier than anything else that could have happened that I simply couldn’t be happy at all without it.
Well … looks like I’d better learn, doesn’t it?
Growing old means learning to give up childish daydreams and just live with what we’ve got. The happier we can do that, the happier we will be.
It looks like that’s what he’s doing, so that’s what I will do, too. Yeah, it would have been happier, I think, if he’d found the skills to leave what must be a miserable marriage and just wait out the disapproval of other people to be in a better one. But most people get scared.
They just, get scared. Then they perpetuate fear so other people get scared, and then … most people stay in miserable marriages because of fear of other people and just wither their lives away.
That’s the society we live in. Okay.
Meanwhile, I have discovered there’s much to be said for living just the way you are, and not yearning all the time for somebody else. Or something else.
There’s much to be said for giving up this always striving to get somewhere. If I just accept that I will always be in the same job for the rest of my life, that I will never achieve enough in any other field to escape it, then I can just relax.
If I just accept that no matter how hard I try to write something that will get me acclaim enough to actually get into that other career, I cannot do it, then I can just relax.
If I can just accept that I will never have enough money to escape that bare-bones, shitty state nursing home on Medicaid, then I can just relax.
If I can just accept that I will never be thin again, I can stop castigating myself for not cutting out entire food groups, not starving on one meal a day of steamed chicken and lettuce with no dressing, not beating myself to injury with exercise I could do when I was twenty, then I can just relax.
We’re all going to die anyway, so we might as well just relax.
What is WRONG with a society that insists not only that we must be twenty-five for the rest of our lives, but that if we don’t believe we can’t be twenty-five anymore and have the life and mindset of a twenty-five-year-old. or we’re not struggling and striving to get back to all of that, something is wrong with us?
Those goals aren’t appropriate for us anymore. We’re not twenty-five!!
And we’re never going to find Prince Charming, buy that first house as a starry-eyed young married couple, or plan that first baby, ever, ever again. (We’re never going to look like the maiden who’s never had that first baby again, either.)
WE’RE OLD. And all that stuff is done.
And I can only assume he is, too.
So, okay. I accept it. You’re free.
And I am, too.
And I will say, there’s a lot to be said for just relaxing and accepting things the way they are. I have this new couch now that’s so comfy I don’t even want to get up, and I sit here and type on my laptop. Right now I have this video of a cozy living room with a crackling fireplace in a rainstorm on, and this is fine.
This is all I need.
Because if you’re still struggling at age fifty-five, thinking you NEED worldly success and you NEED recognition and you NEED money and you NEED a relationship … well, you could end up really hurting, because what if you don’t get it? That’s how life is.
And haven’t I been hurt enough?
You can’t stop life from doing whatever it is that life’s going to do. And in the end, you’re dead and none of it matters anymore anyway.
So quit struggling and enjoy things the way they are. There’s nothing wrong with it. Just quit struggling, appreciate what’s been given, and be happy with it. There’s nothing you can do about it anyway.
In the Bridges of Madison County, there’s a scene at the end where the lovers run into each other one more time. There’s a terrible rainstorm and they’re staring at each other across a few yards of driving rain. Then Meryl Streep’s husband gets back in the truck and they pull away.
They end up behind Clint Eastwood in traffic. He pulls out the necklace Meryl has given him and hangs it on the rear view mirror where she can see it.
The light turns green. He sits there idling at the intersection while her husband blows the horn.
If she wants to, she can get out of her truck and run and get into his. He’s waiting for her. Her hand is on the door handle. She could do it. She could run.
I’ve been sitting there waiting at that green light for eight years. I don’t know why my guy never ran. It’s not because he’s got teenagers still at home; they’re nearing forty now. Soon his grandchildren will be teenagers. Yet he showed up here a couple of days ago, just to see if the new website finally transferred, I guess.
Most of the old blogs are gone. The relationship is over. He’s staying.
It’s probably not because he’s got a good relationship with his wife. Meryl Streep didn’t leave because she didn’t want to hurt her husband; but as we see, it wasn’t a bad relationship. They loved each other; it just wasn’t much of a life for her and she felt stifled in her role as a farm wife and nurturer to the kids in a stultifying small town. It would have been exhilarating, to travel the world with a National Geographic photographer and have an exciting love affair. But she didn’t want to hurt her husband, whom she felt a quiet love for and didn’t want to damage socially and who loved her.
It probably wasn’t a distant marriage with someone she felt like she didn’t even really know.
Well … no matter. He decided he had to lie in the bed he made. He’s going to be sixty-five next month, and nobody leaves at sixty-five. It’s too late now … right?
This is the bed I have now, and I am comfortable in it. And that will make all the difference.